In 1663 Connecticut authorities hanged Mary Barnes for witchcraft, and now her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter wants her ancestor’s name cleared, along with those of ten other executed witches. It must be a lot harder to live down a family scandal in Connecticut. “Uh-oh, Mildred, here comes that woman whose seventh grandmother was hanged for being a witch. I hope she doesn’t try to sit next to us.”

From The Witch of Salem, by Freeland A. Carter via Wikimedia Commons

This effort has attracted the attention of the Connecticut Wiccan & Pagan Network (suggested motto: “Loki is Our Homeboy”), which wants a proclamation from the governor. They’re sending postcards—I’m not making this up—with the message, “I am a Pagan/Witch and I vote. Clear the names of Connecticut’s eleven accused and executed witches.”

I’m assuming the descendants of the condemned witches want their ancestors declared innocent. If that’s the case, it doesn’t really seem helpful to have the witch/pagan lobby involved. If the point is that grandma was executed for something she didn’t do, wouldn’t you want to keep people who affirm the okayness of what she was accused of doing from appropriating her as a symbol?

Oh, and if you’re thinking that Connecticut was still a colony when it was executing witches and the aggrieved parties should therefore take their case to the British Empire, the CWPN already tried applying to Queen Elizabeth II for a pardon. Gotta admire their persistence.

One response to “Toil and trouble”

Though I haven’t studied this, seems I read somewhere that the English executed more people for witchcraft in the 17th century than the Spanish executed in their inquisition. Not American colonists, but the English back home. We’ve been led to believe, however, that their colonial friends across the ocean were the guys with the witch obsession.